


beneath the shadow of atlas (we're all just chasing stardust)

by GrimRevolution



Series: Captain Marvel [1]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 06:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18047075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimRevolution/pseuds/GrimRevolution
Summary: Carol's gone. She went back to space.What the hell was Fury supposed to do about the alien cat?





	beneath the shadow of atlas (we're all just chasing stardust)

Only a few people questioned the cat. Fury didn’t say much about her; just that she belonged to ‘a friend’ and was gonna be baby-sat for an undetermined amount of time. Coulson scratched between the ears whenever he came in, earning a purr each time.

Goose followed the warm patches of the sun around the office, only ate canned food, refused to play with mice—though she did chase a ball now and then, and, when she yawned, Fury would lean to the side and see if the tentacles were visible.

(They never were.)

oOo

“Agent Fury, I—is that a _cat_?”

Fury looked up from his keyboard, eyed the young man in the doorway, and glanced over at Goose who had found a perch, somehow, along the windowsill, tail curled and sunlight danced along orange fur, turning it to fire.

Metaphorically.

(Goose bursting into flames wouldn’t have been a _total_ surprise next to all the other crazy shit but thank God she hadn’t. )

“Yes,” Fury said. The one good eye narrowed. “What? Do _you_ not like cats?”

“Uh, n-no sir! I mean, um, yes sir; I like cats, I just—”

Goose jumped from her perch to the desk, brushed her tail along Fury’s chin, up a dark cheek, and against the leather eye patch. With a _murrp_ , she flopped down over a finally still hand and the mouse beneath it, watching the fidgeting human with half lidded eyes.

“Uh, just. The folders you requested,” the delivery boy said. “Sir.” He didn’t wait to be dismissed and just scrambled out of the room, door still open behind him.

Huh. Must’ve been pretty new.

An eyebrow rose higher and higher the further the agent ran. Scoffing, Fury shook his head. “Kid looked like you were going to eat him,” he said, aiming the words towards fuzzy, pointed ears.

Goose tilted her head back and meowed.

Fury frowned. “ _Were_ you going to eat him?”

The tail returned to smack him on the nose.

oOo

It was hard looking down after Carol. The Earth was there as it always was. As it always will be. Goose prowled around the rooftop, tail lifted high, hunting between the long shadows and faint traces of light. Fury leaned back against the access door, beer bottle in hand, and watched small clouds disrupt the shape of the moon.

One of the stars winked at him, he took a sip from the bottle. Metal thunked and he glanced over at where Goose had perched. The rest of the world was a splash of colours painted on a black canvas and the flerken was the pieces carved away. An empty patch of space that didn’t quite belong.

“Wish I could ask you how you got here,” Fury said, “and how you got those... creepy tentacle things.”

Goose didn’t move.

Fury turned his attention back to the moon. “Where do you think she is now?” Weight pressed against his calf and he looked down at the feline-shaped body sitting beside him. “Weren’t you—?” He glanced at the empty space Goose had been and decided that it was probably just another one of those Things.

Orange fur was soft beneath his fingers and Goose titled her head up, looking left of the moon and towards a small cluster of stars.

“Huh,” Fury said, sipped his beer, sighed. “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

oOo

Coulson paused outside Fury’s door, hand raised, knuckles almost brushing the wood. Inside, he could hear the other man—five steps forward, pause, five steps back.

“You can’t just go around eating anything you wanna eat!”

There didn’t seem to be anyone else—

Something made a sound. A small _mmmmrph_ that came deep within a chest. The cat. Goose. Coulson blinked, frowned, lowered his hand and pressed his ear against the door.

“That was my gun! My good gun!” Fury sighed. Took a couple of steps, paused. “I liked that gun!”

Another unashamed _mrrr_.

“Nope. Nu uh. You’re not getting out of this. Not with those big, sad eyes of yours. It was _my_ gun!”

Goose meowed and it faded into a different sound. A wet, reverse slurping noise almost like a car engine but more as if it had been trying to start underwater clogged with sewage, and with a stopper at one end.

“Oh, _hell_ no—”

Something clunked against wood. Coulson turned on his heel and walked the other way.

Whatever it was, he didn’t want to know.

oOo

It seemed that once a person flew through space and fought aliens (met aliens, saw aliens, touched aliens, stood by aliens) for the good of the planet, someone higher up saw that person as an asset.

Level Six. That was nice. Nick Fury packed up his desk, grabbed Coulson by the ear, shoved Goose in a pet/alien carrier, and they were off to Washington.

Normally, SHIELD would have had them flying on the cheapest tickets available but after a quick conversation with the Director (stemming along the lines of: “the cat belongs to a woman with unimaginable powers that fell from the sky. Do you honestly want to put it on a plane with civilians?”), everyone decided it would be best to go by private jet. Which was nice. Meant Goose could wander about the cabin.

Fury watched her squeeze underneath seats, paw at the pilot’s locked door (“allergies, sir.”), and finally curl up in the middle of the booth’s table.

Coulson sat across from him, watching the Flerken with rapt attention. “So,” he said after a moment, “the cat.”

“What about the cat?”

“Is she yours now?”

Goose rolled over and yawned. Still no signs of tentacles. Her tag dragged along the wood, her tail curled into a lazy C.

“No. She’ll come back.”

Coulson frowned. “How do you know?”

Fury turned to look at the younger man. “Because that’s what she does,” he said.

oOo

“The last place at least had a window,” Fury muttered to himself, setting his bags down in his new office. It was bigger, loaded with new equipment, new desk, new name plate. Goose sniffed the fake plant in the corner, paws silent against the linoleum.

Tugging out the cat bed was the first priority and Fury left out in the middle of the room so the Flerken could drag it to whichever corner she liked. Goose picked the space beside the fake plant, dragged her claws down the woven pot, and curled up while everything was being unpacked.

On top of everything was the small, almost unmarked file on Carol. Fury flipped through the pages, stopping on a seaweed tinted Polaroid of her grinning broadly at the camera, sandwiched between Monica and Maria Rambeau. She was still in her uniform, SHIELD cap shadowing her face, with Goose in the corner ready to pounce into her lap.

Fury smiled fondly down at her, remembering the way she had shielded her face after realizing what he’d been doing and the laughter that filled the room when Monica tackled her around the waist.

Goose had scrambled out of the way of flailing limbs, seeking refuge on the table. Maria easily wrestled the camera out of Fury’s hands and had taken picture after picture until her daughter and best friend had decided that she was the true enemy. They had run out to the yard, giggling and laughing the whole way, fireflies drifting at their heels and the stars brightening at the sound of their joy.

Knuckles wrapped against the doorframe. “Sir?”

“Coulson,” Placing the picture down, Fury turned.

“We have a meeting, sir.”

Of course they did. “I’m right behind you,” Fury said, closing the file. He paused in the doorway and turned to Goose. “I’ll get you food when I come back,” he said, “So don’t eat anything. You’ll ruin your supper.”

Goose opened one eye, flicked her ears, and returned to her nap.

oOo

Victoria Hand put dried cat food in the bowl, claiming something about it being ‘healthier’.

Her desk was gone the next day, leaving nothing but a stapler and a couple of indentations on the carpet behind.

Fury was sure it would show up.

Eventually.

oOo

He and Coulson were the new meat. Fury knew that. Coulson knew that. Keller (actual _human_ Keller, not Talos in disguise) knew that. As the new guys they were put with the bullshit the other agents didn’t want to deal with.

Like filing records ten stories beneath the surface. The room was like the one at Pegasus only this one stretched farther than he bothered to care with lights that flickered suspiciously. Fury eyed them, waiting for the bulbs to go out at any moment.

“Sir,” Coulson said, offering another bunch of folders to be filed away. “Do you—”

He was interrupted by a pressing _meow_ that came from the entrance to the stacks. Goose sat there, watching them, framed by the steel cases on either side. He licked his lips, tilted his head to the side, and made a humphing _mmurrp_.

“Is it dinner time already?” Fury straightened, cracked his joints, worked out the kinks in his limbs. “Alright, Goosey, I’m coming.”

“Uh,” Coulson grabbed the other agent’s sleeve, eyes never leaving the Flerken. “Sir, we’re on sublevel ten.”

Fury looked down at the wrinkled fabric. “Your point?”

“The only way down here is through a secure elevator so,” Coulson nodded towards Goose. “How’d she get down here?”

“Look, Rook,” Fury sighed. “If I questioned everything that cat did and how she did it you’d have to ship me off to an asylum.”

oOo

“God, you know what? If I had known this job involved this much paperwork I would have retired years ago.”

Goose purred, sprawled across the desk, chin resting on the edge of the keyboard. Her tail was partially wound around Fury’s wrist, eyes almost closed, ears following sounds that humans couldn’t hear.

“One of these days I’m gonna take all these computers out to the back, get a baseball bat, and—” Fury cut off the words before the rest could leave, exhaled, and ran his hand down the soft, orange back. “It’s all bullshit, Goose.”

Lifting her head, the Flerken looked pointedly at the computer.

“No. _No_ ,” Fury said. “You’re not eating that. It’ll probably give you indigestion.”

Goose meowed.

oOo

Victoria’s desk _was_ found.

Wet.

On its side.

Behind the dumpsters.

Fury shut himself in his office to laugh.

oOo

One of the doors opened and Coulson heard the faint jingle of Goose’s tag as the cat bounded down the hallway. A couple of walking agents paused, getting out of the way and leading the path open to an elderly women walking arm in arm with Keller.

Peeking over his cubical wall, Coulson watched as her face brightened and a smile softened the wrinkles on her face. “Hello beautiful,” the woman cooed, leaning heavily on her cane. “Who are _you_?”

“That’s Goose,” Keller said, hands behind his back, and took a not-so-subtle step away from the cat. “She’s being, uh, looked after by one of our agents.”

Yeah. That was one way to put it.

Goose sat by the edge of the woman’s cane, staring upwards.

Nick Fury’s door opened a second time and he walked out, one good eye narrowed, and scooped the cat up before she could make another run for it. “What’re you doin’?” He said, holding Goose beneath the armpits. “Huh? What kinda trouble are you gonna get into today?”

 _Mrrow_.

“Nuh uh. You’re not sneaking off. Not after you got your butt stuck in the vending machine.”

Keller cleared his throat and Fury turned. “Agent Fury,” the Director said, “this is Peggy Carter.”

Cat and man stared at the woman for a solid thirty seconds before Goose was holstered like a small sack of potatoes.

“Ma’am,” Fury said, offering his hand.

She took it, shook it, grinned. “You keep an eye on that trouble maker, Agent.”

“If you think the cat’s bad,” Fury said, looking down at Goose, “you should meet her owner.”

Peggy’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “I look forward to it,” she said.

oOo

“Grab the map out of the seat pocket, would you?” Fury kept his eyes forward on the bright brake lights of the semi in front of them. Traffic lined the highway, stretching from Maryland to New York. Red as far as the eye could see.

“Sure thing, boss,” Coulson said, undoing his seatbelt and turning around. He froze as passing headlight illuminated soft, gold eyes and bright orange fur.

Goose watched him, laying across Fury’s bags, unbothered by the stop and go motions of the car. Her claws occasionally dug into the canvas, kneading lazily into the fabric.

Fishing out the maps, Coulson settled back in his seat and stared ahead for a good couple of seconds with the papers on his lap. “Sir?”

“What?” They inched forward.

Coulson kept staring ahead. “You didn’t bring Goose, did you?”

Fury turned his head just enough to see him out of the corner of his good eye. “I did not,” he said, slowly.

“That’s what I thought.”

oOo

Fury had sent Coulson home a while back, leaving just him, a few of the night crew, and Goose still in the Hub. The words on the computer blurred together. He rubbed at his face and glanced over at the pager sitting next to the plant Victoria had dropped in his arms one day.

It looked dead to the word. Innocent. Meaningless.

 _For emergencies only_.

Fury wondered how she was doing. How Talos was doing.

“Wonder how much it would cost to phone someone halfway across the universe,” he said to Goose.

With a yawn, the Flerken rolled over, stuck her nose under her tail, and went back to sleep.

oOo

“I’m not saying that we should just give up on focusing on those types of threats, sir,” Fury said, standing in front of Keller’s desk, arms behind his back. “I’m saying that our focus needs to be broader instead of linear. Accept that there are dangers we don’t understand.”

“And what kind of threats do you think are coming, Agent Fury?” Keller turned to look out the floor to ceiling windows but they reflected his scowl anyway. “Aliens?”

Fury placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “We’ve already seen that, sir,” he said. “I’m saying that we can’t just see threats when we could also see allies.”

Keller scoffed. “This is about that Avenger Initiative you wrote up, isn’t it?” He turned and looked over Fury with dark eyes. “The world security council will never go for it.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Fury straightened, “they also haven’t seen what I have.”

oOo

Fury drove. He drove further and further away from SHIELD and Keller and the government. For a while, he didn’t care where the roads took him, only stopping for food and the occasional bathroom break. Goose sat in the passenger seat, looking content as ever as street lights and other cars passed.

At the last pullover, Fury sat in the car, stared out the dark windshield, and breathed in. “Why me?” He asked the Flerken.

Goose purred.

“Out of all the agents in the world...” There was no question. There was no answer. There was just a woman halfway across the universe that shone like the sun and had the universe in her eyes. Left in her stardust wake there was him and a not-quite-a-cat.

Goose watched him, slowly blinked her eyes, settled in the seat with her legs folded beneath her. Another creature of the cosmos.

And then there was him. Human. Terran.

Fury groaned and dragged his hands down his face. “What do I do now?” He directed the question upwards, hoping that maybe, somehow, Carol would hear him.

Beside him, Goose got to her feet, stretched out each limb, and laid back down.

“Great talk,” Fury told the Flerken. They sat there for another moment, letting the last song play out. Some cars passed them by, swallowed up by the night once they’d gone far enough. The moon sat in the sky, half hung-over and low over the tree line.

With a final sigh, Fury rolled all the windows down and turned the car around.

**Author's Note:**

> carol danvers could uppercut me to the chest and i would thank her for her service


End file.
